November 2009

November 25, 2009

Thanksgiving is before us. I cannot believe it. It is time
to mix family, food, wine, laughter, and likely a few age old family stories
that can’t seem to go untold. It should be a really fun time; seeing family
that you haven’t seen in a while; catching up with friends and loved ones. And
yet, the holidays often become very stressful; overwhelming… so many moving
parts.

Does this sound familiar? Does it sound like I’m writing
about something other than Thanksgiving? We spend a lot of time at SkillSoft
discussing our assets; and we have many of them! It’s like a huge Thanksgiving
meal; so much food, so little time. So, what is someone supposed to do when it
gets confusing?

SkillSoft KnowledgeCenters aggregate relevant data around a
subject, so learners can gain access to courses, Books24x7, Business Impact and
Challenge Series titles, mentoring, Learning Sparks, Learning Roadmaps, and
other assets. And, it’s all about one subject – leadership, management, project
management, Oracle, Six Sigma, Java, and many, many others. So, in essence,
KnowledgeCenters provide only the assets you need around a particular subject.

Now, wouldn’t that be nice for Thanksgiving? My Thanksgiving
KnowledgeCenter would include all the great food, some family (but not all!),
good friends, wine, a beautiful sunny day, and perhaps a time limit, so it’s
not awkward when it’s time to say goodnight.I’d leave out the family drama, the arguments that tend to resurface
around the holidays, and the guilt associated with not getting to see everyone
who I’d like to see.

I’ve just described my ideal Thanksgiving in a package.
That’s what a KnowledgeCenter is. It’s a universe of learning around one topic,
where every asset is handpicked just for you!

November 20, 2009

Much of the conversations we get engaged in with customers often involve
discussion of “How did other companies do it?” - discussions around
benchmarking processes. Yet most of the emerging ideas in leadership and
talent development we hear from eminent thinkers, researchers and writers warn
of benchmarking to mediocrity. Stuart
Hart, author of Capitalism at the Crossroads, has a dynamite quote buried
in the middle of his book:

“A smart strategist gravitates toward ill-defined and ambiguous
opportunities. That is because once everything has been defined and
reduced to standard operating procedure, there is no money left to be made.” -
Stuart Hart

The point he is making, and the same point Jeffrey Pfeffer, Jonas
Ridderstrale, Lynda Gratton and
others have made in our interviews, is the same - to be the market surprise,
instead of be surprised, you need to create unique and original ways of
conducting your business. Lynda Gratton calls this “signature
processes.” Red Hat is a great example. We were chatting with a
senior executive at Red Hat and I explained part of a presentation we could
provide which would showcase companies with leading implementation practices
and he stopped me and said, “Look I don’t mean to interrupt but I can’t bring
that story in here. At Red Hat we do it the Red Hat Way.” He went
on to say of course they don’t ignore the market landscape or operate in some
creative oasis, but that once they make a bet on a product or service, they
execute their way. By doing it the Red Hat Way, they also build great
culture and engagement because everyone feels they are part of true creation.

A lifetime ago around 2001, while leading a small start-up we got together
our customer research and stories and dreamed up an online system which could
aid the learner and leader to use, apply, track, and campaign on our video
learning assets. Then we built the system and when we took it on the road
test, people said, “Oh you’ve built an LMS.” A what? “You’ve
created a a Learning
Management System, although it’s got some stuff we haven’t seen
before.” We had indeed built an LMS before we had ever heard of
one. Instead of benchmarking LMS vendors (whom we didn’t know existed),
and listening to our customers instead, we created something unique and did it
with passion and energy because we believed in our originality and our ability
to create a killer app. The tip coming from emerging leadership is this:
pay attention to the market yes, but be bold and original in what - and
importantly how - you execute.

November 17, 2009

So many of us commute to work each day. We go over bridges,
through tunnels, take highways. We seldom think about it, beyond hoping that
there isn’t a huge traffic jam that will make us late.

Reading about the closure – and reopening – of the Bay
Bridge in California started me thinking about my commute and the roads I take
to work every day. What if a road closed? Would I know another way to work? Can
I even get there another way?

This is the sort of thing that happens at work every day. I
have to solve a problem. I start down one path to do so and realize, at some
point, that perhaps the method I’m embarking on will not get me the result I
want.So, I have to re-orient my
thinking – take a different road – to get me the result I want.

The trick to being able to do that successfully is having
the knowledge of the resources around me that can be used to solve the problem.
A project going off the tracks? Perhaps a quick refresher on managing projects
would help me get the endeavor back on track.Can’t create a pivot table in Excel? Reading a few lines of a book on Excel
2007 would walk me through the steps.

So, in essence, I spend every work day finding the right
road – the right path – to get me where I need to go. In this context – the work context – I am good
on my feet. I can toggle between doing my job and finding an answer pretty
easily. I know what tools I have – courses, books, videos – and I know how to
find them via SkillPort and use them. Sadly, in my car… well… I have a bad sense of
direction. If someone closed my road to
work, I’d sit there until it reopened. Perhaps it’s time to invest in a GPS.

November 12, 2009

OK, let’s first establish the context – I am a Baby Boomer
(well, really, on the very youngest
edge of that generational divide).My
peers think that I’m a technology genius since I work in elearning, after all –
but really I feel that I’m falling behind every day.I asked for an iTouch TM for my last birthday so
that I can read MapQuest on the big screen to find my way around, and because I
love the way you can zoom in on photos with that finger-stretch action.Last night, after a ten hour day of working
on my laptop, I shifted from my home office to the living room sofa to
transition to “leisure time.”(There
really is a connection to learning coming soon.)

The home page of my iTouch has a YouTube icon.As a way of getting acquainted with my
iTouch, I was systematically tapping all
the icons and menus, including YouTube.I’ve launched very few YouTube videos,
because I’ve not been too interested in the Dancing
Babies and other “educational” subjects you hear about on the evening news.But I eventually tapped the “Most Viewed”
icon and what came to the top of the list was a video called “Carl Sagan – A Glorious Dawn”
(Cosmos Remixed).Now this title
appealed to my passion for academic inquiry, and so I launched.

The music, the images – captivating.I mean, a DJ re-re-remix, you know? But
within, the pearls of wisdom: “If you
wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”I’m mesmerized by the quality of the
image on the screen, the clarity of sound through the ear-buds: “A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but
a galaxy rise – a morning filled with four hundred billion suns, the rising of
the Milky Way.”Science,
poetry and thought, together in the palm of my hand: “The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean; recently
we’ve waded in, and the water seems inviting…”

Leisure, learning, recreation, learning, music, learning, imagery, learning…blended til the boundaries are impossible to
discern.(This being my own poetry, almost as mystical as Carl
Sagan’s.)The point, dear reader, is
that the immediacy of the learning
opportunity is what drew me into my learning moment.And so we observe the very equal importance
of content and delivery.

This is the idea behind SkillSoft learning
portlets.Portlets bring access to
learning out of the Learning Management System and into the familiar online
sites where employees already spend time.In the course of day-to-day work, an employee is one click away from
problem-solving information or personal enrichment.With all the priorities competing for the
time and attention of today’s knowledge worker, convenient access is as
critical as engaging content.

November 09, 2009

“If
you have lunch with the same people you’ve been having lunch with for five
years, you’ll probably have the same conversations you’ve been having for five
years. Have lunch with someone new! You both might learn
something!” - Tom Peters

Some
of the most fascinating and intellectually fun people I know are constantly
meeting and interacting with new people. We once spent an hour with Patrick Dixon as he stood in front of a
camera and provided stacks of incredible stories and insights one after another
on highly divergent topics and never once repeated himself. I asked him
later where in the world with all of his touring and lecturing did he have time
to do research? He explained his lecturing and traveling was his
research. He gets invited to all varieties of industry meetings and
conferences, and as a result shares meals and conversations with players at all
levels in banking, in trade, in technology, in politics, in climate change, and
much more. And he doesn’t claim to be an expert in any of these
disciplines but approaches each event and conversation with an open and
inquiring mind.

He
has a marvelous story in which he was attending a financial trade conference
and having dinner with some top executives. Around the table, each was
explaining their role in the banking industry and after one gentleman provided
a lengthy and complicated explanation of his work in derivatives trading,
Patrick asked, “I don’t mean to impolite, but do you understand what you
do?” The gentleman paused and said, “It’s true, what I do has become so
complicated even I don’t always understand it. Sometimes if I take a
shower and have a brisk walk and clear my mind, if my boss were to call me at
that moment I could clearly explain our derivatives product.”

Patrick
used that interaction and story to share in later presentations on the value of
trust and compliance. The tip here is: get out of your comfort zone, have
new conversations and don’t be afraid to ask a provocative question or
two. Good luck!

November 04, 2009

Between blog
posts by book publisherTim O’Reilly,
and the recent announcement by Google
about the pending release of the Google Editions ebook store, there has been a
lot of talk recently about “books on the cloud” and the concept of a “cloud
library.” The terms are borrowed from the broader “cloud computing”
concept, which encompasses a wide range of managed services, including;
software as a service (SaaS), software on demand, and platform as a service
(PaaS) technologies. Basically, cloud computing offers
new, flexible and generally more affordable
ways to build, deliver, and purchase software.

The truth is that “books on the cloud” are nothing new.
Here at Books24x7, we’ve
been doing it for over 10 years. In the fall of 1999, Books24x7
released its first online, on demand, reference collection. At launch, ITPro
consisted of 200 technical books delivered in a “24x7” web based
environment. In those early days, we didn’t need to do much more than put
the content online and offer the solution in a simple subscription-based model
to drive huge demand and create raving fans. As hard as it is to imagine,
in 1999 we weren’t all living in a 24x7 on demand web world. But IT folks
and other technical professionals were. As the early adopters of what are
now considered to be rudimentary web technologies -- listservs, text-only
email, early HTML websites painfully delivered over dial up networks -- techies
the world over were more than ready for a new delivery method for trusted
technical content. Our publisher
partners saw the potential, and most jumped at the chance to provide a new
means of access to their readers, while deriving new revenue streams for
themselves.

Over the years we have exponentially grown
the number of titles available, as well as the range of Books24x7 topical collections,
and enhanced the platform
feature set and delivery methods to encompass deep portal integrations, mobile
access, and more. But, from day one, the content has always resided
on web servers ready for instant “anytime, anywhere” access. Today,
“books on the cloud” may be the fashionable buzzword; but regardless of
terminology, a great idea that puts knowledge in the hands of people who need
it most is always in vogue.

November 03, 2009

e-learning can provide benefits at all levels of an organization. Because I work in the industry, the benefits are obvious to me. But recent blog posts by two of my colleagues, Rachel and Julie got me thinking about those benefits again and about the fact that maybe some of them aren’t so obvious to the rest of the world. So for my second blog post, I thought for my second post a little return to basics might be in order.

For learners, e-learning resources provide the ultimate in self-service education. E-learning resources are “always on” allowing learners to access materials where and when it best suits their schedules and their learning needs. A diverse library of learning assets also means that learners can choose the best learning modality to match their learning style. And because learners can return to materials over time, they can review and refresh their learning from other e- or live learning experiences increasing the impact of all your training efforts.

From an organization standpoint, e-learning can often provide a cost-effective means for increasing the impact of training within your organization by making resources available to more people. Workshops, seminars, and other classroom-based training options can be highly effective . . . but they can also be costly and they require learners to spend time away from the job. As a result, you may have to limit participation in these live events to a select portion of your audience. With e-learning you can provide learning materials to more of your audience with minimal disruption of their work.

Obviously these are just a few of the benefits to using e-learning within an organization. What other benefits of e-learning are important to your learners or to your learning organization?

Next week I’ll be heading off to present at Learning 2009 in Orlando Florida. I’m looking forward to spending time immersed in the great learning culture and learning from and sharing with my colleagues. If you’re there, look me up. We can compare notes . . . or hit the rides!